Category News

Tropical coral reefs cover less than 1% of the seafloor, yet support 25% of all marine species. They are also incredibly vulnerable. Over the past few decades, an estimated 30%-50% have already been lost. Yet we are approaching a terrifying threshold. After record-breaking ocean heatwaves of 2023-24, which saw coral “bleaching” in at least 83 countries, scientists are looking towards 2026 with growing dread.

The question is whether this will be the year a global tipping point is reached for warm-water coral – a point beyond which their fate is sealed, and even the most resilient species can no longer recover.

The fate of these ecosystems may hinge on events in the Pacific Ocean, in particular a natural climate cycle called the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO)...

One of the largest artificial reefs in the world has been installed at a wind farm off the Sussex coast. The project at the Rampion Offshore Wind Farm is the first of its kind, with 75,000 specially designed “reef cubes” placed at the bottom of a single turbine. It is part of a nature-inclusive design project, with the cubes helping to protect the turbine from erosion while also serving as a home for a wide range of marine life.

Helen Elphick, an innovations partner at RWE, the company that operates Rampion, said it was exciting to be involved in a trial which was a “sustainable win-win”.

The reef cubes have been designed with a chamber in the middle and a honeycomb texture on the outside to encourage marine life to use them.

Samuel Hickling, the chief scientific officer at ARC...

A global agreement designed to protect the world’s oceans and reverse damage to marine life is set to become international law. The High Seas Treaty received its 60th ratification by Morocco on Friday, meaning that it will now take effect from January. The deal, which has been two decades in the making, will pave the way for international waters to be placed into marine protected areas.

Environmentalists heralded the milestone as a “monumental achievement” and evidence that countries can work together for environmental protection.

“Covering more than two-thirds of the ocean, the agreement sets binding rules to conserve and sustainably use marine biodiversity,” United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Decades of overfishing, pollution from shipping and warming ocea...

The UK’s seas have had their warmest start to the year since records began, helping to drive some dramatic changes in marine life and for its fishing communities. The average surface temperature of UK waters in the seven months to the end of July was more than 0.2C higher than any year since 1980, BBC analysis of provisional Met Office data suggests. That might not sound much, but the UK’s seas are now considerably warmer than even a few decades ago, a trend driven by humanity’s burning of fossil fuels.

That is contributing to major changes in the UK’s marine ecosystems, with some new species entering our seas and others struggling to cope with the heat.

Scientists and amateur naturalists have observed a remarkable range of species not usually widespread in UK waters, including octo...

In 1986, just one year after Live Aid shook the world, another global event took place—one that mobilised 20 million people in 89 countries, raised $35 million, and helped cancel $150 million in African debt. It was called Sport Aid. Yet today, it’s been all but erased from public memory.

The BBC’s recent documentary on the 40th anniversary of Live Aid honours the cultural power of that moment. But in its final episode, it attributes Bob Geldof’s honorary knighthood solely to Band Aid and Live Aid. That’s simply not accurate. Geldof’s KBE came after Sport Aid—not as a continuation of Live Aid, but as a radical evolution of it.

I am not only the founder of earthdive, I also founded and organised Sport Aid with a different ambition...

A tiny, obscure animal often sold as aquarium food has been quietly protecting our planet from global warming by undertaking an epic migration, according to new research. These “unsung heroes” called zooplankton gorge themselves and grow fat in spring before sinking hundreds of metres into the deep ocean in Antarctica where they burn the fat. This locks away as much planet-warming carbon as the annual emissions of roughly 55 million petrol cars, stopping it from further warming our atmosphere, according to researchers.

This is much more than scientists expected. But just as researchers uncover this service to our planet, threats to the zooplankton are growing.

Scientists have spent years probing the animal’s annua...

Unregulated mining in the deep sea should not be allowed to go ahead, the head of the United Nations has warned. “The deep sea cannot become the Wild West,” UN Secretary General António Guterres said at the opening of the UN Oceans Conference in Nice, France. His words were echoed by French President Emmanuel Macron, who declared the “oceans are not for sale”.

The remarks appear to refer to the decision by President Trump in April to begin issuing permits for the extraction of critical minerals in international waters.

There is increasing interest in extracting precious minerals from what are called metallic “nodules” that naturally occur on the seabed.

But marine scientists are concerned about the harm that could be caused.

“The ocean is not for sale...

Fish similar to those made famous by the movie Finding Nemo are shrinking to cope with marine heatwaves, a study has found. The research recorded clownfish living on coral reefs slimmed down drastically when ocean temperatures rocketed in 2023. Scientists say the discovery was a big surprise and could help explain the rapidly declining size of other fish in the world’s oceans.

A growing body of evidence suggests animals are shape shifting to cope with climate change, including birds, lizards and insects.

“Nemos can shrink, and they do it to survive these heat stress events,” said Dr Theresa Rueger, senior lecturer in Tropical Marine Sciences at Newcastle University.

The researchers studied pairs of clownfish living in reefs off Kimbe Bay in Papua New Guinea, a hot spot of marine ...

Before the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) attracts the world’s attention in November in Belém, in the Brazilian Amazon, an event scheduled for June could set the tone for the negotiations that will take place in the capital of Pará state. The Oceans Conference in Nice, France, will discuss the relationship between the oceans and global climate change.

“It’ll be a place where discussions can take place, where we can integrate different principles from different conventions so that they work in a unified way, rather than in isolation,” pointed out David Obura, chairman of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), during the FAPESP Conference “Contributions to COP30: Ocean, Biodiversity and Climate Nexus,” held on April...

Whale carcasses sinking to the ocean floor bring a buffet of nutrients to the deep sea. But whales don’t have to be dead to be big movers of nutrients. Migrating baleen whales transport more than 3,700 tons of nitrogen and more than 46,000 tons of biomass each year from high-latitude feeding areas to warm, shallow breeding waters near the tropics, according to a recent study published in Nature Communications.

“In places like Hawaii, or the Caribbean, or the coastal waters of Western Australia, where nitrogen is often a limiting nutrient, migrating whales can have a big impact on the local biogeochemistry,” said Joe Roman, lead author of the new study and a conservation biologist at the University of Vermont.

Roman and his colleagues found that in some breeding areas, the ...